Wednesday, September 27 2006 14:34 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Paris: With the European rugby union season barely a month old, some clubs and countries are already battling against a crippling list to players engaging in what is now reckoned to be the most dangerous of all professional sports.

While the advent of professionalism has no doubt increased the skills and athleticism of players, bringing in bigger crowds to watch generally higher standards of rugby, a downside has been the some-time transformation of the sport into a gladiatorial contest where only the strongest survive.

England face a tough November line-up of internationals against New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa (two Tests) but coach Andy Robinson's first training camp has descended into a farce after a raft of injuries to leading players.

Twenty-three of the 40 elite group miss training because of injury and RFU head of sports medicine Dr Simon Kemp says, "This week we have seen an unusual and unprecedented number of injured players with approximately 50 percent of the Elite Player Squad/Senior National Academy squad unfit to train." "The majority of these injuries this week are the sort of impact related ones that appear to be a consequence of the ferocity of the collisions seen in the modern professional game." A quick-fix England, who have lost their last five matches, their worst run of results since the mid-1980s, will hardly have the All Blacks quaking in their boots.

A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine rated rugby as more dangerous than rugby league, Australian Rules football, soccer and ice hockey, showing that, on average, in every Premiership fixture two players from each side were lost for 18 days.

Former England lock and respected rugby writer Paul Ackford called professional rugby "a series of car crashes with the biggest usually prevailing over the quickest".

"Almost every rule change and regulation since rugby union went professional was introduced to make the game more attractive to watch," Ackford says.

"It is a matter of record that there is more ball-in-play time than ever before." "But the consequence has been to make the game and the players more susceptible to injury. There is no down time any longer. The ball bounces around from mini-maul to line-out to scrum to mini-ruck and the players bounce around too."

Damien Hopley, the chief executive of the Professional Rugby Players' Association, has called for urgent action to be taken to tackle the growing injury problem.

"We need to look at training methods and rest times, and the psychological, emotional and physical strains placed on the players," Hopley tells.

"It is a growing concern and something has to give. Unfortunately it always tends to be the players' bodies."

World Cup favourites New Zealand, two-time winners Australia, and Ireland are among the countries who centrally contract their top players, which means national coaches have complete control over them.

All Blacks coach Graham Henry has had the luxury of naming 22 players who will sit out the first chunk of next season's Super 14 competition ahead of the 2007 World Cup in France.

"Henry knows it is not the quality of the first-choice XV that will determine success in World Cups but the quantity of players able to step up when the principals fall down injured," says Ackford.

Irish internationals playing in Ireland, for example, get the season's first competitive outing this weekend as Dublin supremos bid to keep more players injury-free by lightening their domestic fixture commitments.

As a result of this policy, Munster and Leinster have struggled in the Celtic League because of their inability to field full-strength teams.

But now Brian O'Driscoll, Shane Horgan, Girvan Dempsey and Gordon D'Arcy are back for Leinster, while the returning Ronan O'Gara, Peter Stringer, Donncha O'Callaghan and Paul O'Connell will boost Munster.

French clubs are in the position of having large squads and coaches who employ drastic rotation policies, often to the detriment of the quality of some matches.

Runaway championship leaders Stade Francais, for example, play on Tuesday (26 Sep, 2006) with only one squad member, flanker Remy Martin, having turned out for the full 80 minutes of the Parisian club's last two games.

Montpellier faces Bourgoin with a completely different starting 15 than the one that pushes Toulouse all the way before settling for a 9-9 draw on the weekend, while mid-table Montauban can even boast an injury-free squad.